Bryony Louise Puxley - October 13

Weather and Climate Systems   Precipitation Whiplash Events Across the Southern Great Plains of the United States   Bryony Louise Puxley   Wednesday, October 13 3:00pm Join Google Meet:  https://meet.google.com/joz-jnzu-cgr   The Southern Great Plains is a region that is prone to precipitation extremes and transitions between them which have

Start

October 13, 2021 - 3:00 pm

End

October 13, 2021 - 4:00 pm

Weather and Climate Systems

 

Precipitation Whiplash Events Across the Southern Great Plains of the United States

 

Bryony Louise Puxley

 

Wednesday, October 13

3:00pm

Join Google Meet:

 https://meet.google.com/joz-jnzu-cgr

 

The Southern Great Plains is a region that is prone to precipitation extremes and transitions between them which have direct impacts on agriculture, infrastructure, water quality and water quantity. Previous research has primarily focused on the characteristics and impacts of these transitions on the annual timescale, and those that did investigate shorter timescales do not discuss the Southern Great Plains. My Masters work analysed the characteristics and climatology of transitions between precipitation extremes on the subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) scale across the Southern Great Plains between 1981 and 2018. Transitions between precipitation extremes were defined using a percentile method where S2S precipitation totals at individual grid points were ordered. A transition from the low (high) percentile threshold to the high (low) percentile threshold from one period to the next was defined to be a drought-pluvial (pluvial-drought) transition. It was found that at least onevtransition event occurred somewhere within the Southern Great Plains every year between 1981 and 2018, with the Fall season being the time of year when these events are most likely to occur. However, current studies have purely looked at precipitation whiplash events from a precipitation standpoint and have not analysed how the vegetation and land-surface responds. These remaining questions about the land-surface response pose a gap in knowledge which is important for agricultural sectors and wildfire risk across the Southern Great Plains. By utilising remote sensing from satellites, we can observe the land-surface response to changes in atmospheric precipitation. Satellite observations allow for a broad area of vegetation to be analysed, otherwise manual sampling of vegetation is required which, although accurate, would not provide adequate resolution to understand these whiplash events on a spatial or temporal scale. With 20 years of satellite data, we can begin to fill this gap in knowledge and greatly enhance the understanding of these events, allowing for better predictability and preparedness into the future.